Death Game: Starting as a Trickster, Pretending to Be a God

Chapter 834 Best Party Starter

Excluding the “carjacking incident” they passed on the way back to Lilee and did not see any sign of the Tribunal of Heresy, inside the city there were only two crime scenes left: the stolen potion case and the sacrificial murder scene.

The four arrived first at the alchemy workshop where a large stock of “sacred potions” had been stolen. Peering through the hole in the wall, they saw that the magical seal preserving the scene was still active, and no one inside was sleeping.

That left only the murder that Kui had encountered at the very start.

Following Kui’s lead, they quickly located the crime scene.

It was a fairly large private residence, the sort of home that would be considered well-off inside Lilee.

The open door and the two Tribunal of Heresy members collapsed and lying on the ground — apparently knocked out by exposure during patrol — announced that they had come to the right place.

Phoenix stepped over the two unconscious Tribunal members and entered the house.

What she saw inside made her flinch slightly, then openly show disgust.

“Indeed... this is brutal.”

Kui was right. It was the kind of sight that would make anyone throw up.

On the living room floor, a huge pool of fresh blood formed an eight-pointed star array, and on each point of the star sat a piece of internal organ.

Heart, liver, spleen, lungs, kidneys, stomach, intestines, brain.

On the wall opposite the star, a woman had been nailed up — her abdominal cavity vertically slit and hollowed out, the muscles and skin on both sides hooked and pulled, keeping her belly permanently “open.”

Her head remained intact, but there was a visible incision in the skull — the top of her skull had been reattached.

Normally, corpses from ordinary homicides are quickly removed and cleaned after investigators record the scene, but when a murder involves a sacrifice and ritual, with obvious participation of supernatural power, the whole scene is often preserved intact to study exactly what ritual it was.

After all...

In the realms of the supernatural and magic, there is very little information that images can capture.

That allowed the four to be nauseated all over again.

“Tsk, so this is the Night Valley Realm, huh.”

Entering the house, Fish looked at the cruel tableau. Despite being the youngest, she appeared comparatively calm.

Kui’s face shifted slightly. “No, I’m still a little sick... I really can’t stand scenes with zero aesthetics, I’m going to puke again... You guys are in charge of waking Brother Qi, I’ll go keep watch outside.”

Kui turned and squatted by the doorway.

No one objected to her request; after all, what came next did not really require her.

In fact, to dispel the Death Sleep Technique, Phoenix alone was more than enough.

Beside the corpse inside the house, more Tribunal members lay in disarray.

Phoenix easily found Brother Qi among them, then knelt and began undoing the Death Sleep Technique.

She took out ritual candles, potions, and a pendulum, arranged them, and began chanting without pause.

Although Phoenix’s mastery would allow her to perform almost all magic without props, when conditions permit, arranging the tools reduces consumption and strengthens effects.

As Phoenix’s chant grew clearer, Lin Yu could even sense mana flowing.

A surge of mana poured into Brother Qi’s body, then greenish smoke sprayed from his nose and mouth — he coughed violently twice and jolted awake.

“Cough cough!”

Brother Qi immediately sat up and pulled two gunpowder canisters out of his item space, about to bite at a fuse.

“Calm down! Chill out!”

“Lone Boat, don’t get excited, it’s us!”

Phoenix and Fish spoke at once, and Brother Qi finally collected himself.

“Phew... it’s you guys?!”

“So... those snake people? Did you deal with them?”

Brother Qi’s question froze the three inside the room.

“Snake people?!”

They hadn’t told Brother Qi that this was the work of snake descendants!

Moreover, given Brother Qi’s understanding of the Night Valley Realm, he probably wouldn’t have been able to identify the effect as the Death Sleep Technique and deduce the attackers’ race.

Furthermore, from the phrase “those snake people”... Lin Yu and Phoenix immediately understood what Brother Qi had experienced.

This situation was different from the other people in Lilee knocked out by the Death Sleep Technique.

“You ran into snake descendants?! The snake descendants were inside this house — how many did you see?”

Phoenix asked quickly.

“Five — at first everyone thought this array was a summoning array, the killer some kind of cultist. One of the Tribunal’s specialists was trying to figure out what it would summon,” Brother Qi answered concisely, “but that expert soon realized something was off... I heard him say this thing wasn’t set by a cultist, it was set by a bona fide Abyss dark race, only intentionally made crude to look like an amateur did it.”

“The function was hidden... this isn’t a summoning array, it’s a ‘reverse summoning array,’ so it’s not cultists summoning Abyss creatures, it’s Abyss creatures setting an array to prepare their escape!”

“Once we figured that out, we were going to destroy the array directly, but before we could finish... suddenly five two-legged snakes attacked us — they sprayed green smoke and everyone fell unconscious instantly.”

Brother Qi said with lingering fear, “I thought... I was dead for sure — so what actually happened?”

Phoenix spoke again and briefly explained Fish and Lin Yu’s experience in a few words.

“I see, so those five Abyss dark creatures called ‘snake descendants’ were our targets,” Brother Qi said with dawning comprehension, “so... they didn’t kill any Tribunal members or me because they still wanted to negotiate with that Inquisitor!”

“Yes, but that’s not important now. The urgent task is to figure out where they went,” Phoenix frowned, “from Brother Qi’s description, they probably didn’t release the Death Sleep Technique on schedule. Maybe the escape array was discovered early, so they had to release it... There’s no one left inside the Tribunal now. Could they just barge into the Tribunal directly?”

“I doubt it.”

Kui’s voice sounded.

“Kui, how are you inside?”

Phoenix looked toward Kui in surprise and found she had moved into the house.

“Because there are five snake descendants lying on the roof outside,” Kui said with a smile, feigning calm, “I opened Third-Person Perspective and saw them... it scared me to death.”

“They’re still here?!”

Phoenix exclaimed.

Brother Qi’s expression hardened. “What do we do? We’ll have to fight them, but... here?”

“Unfortunately, we don’t have a choice.”

Lin Yu said in a low voice.

“Why is that?”

Phoenix looked at Lin Yu, puzzled.

Lin Yu pointed to an empty spot beside him.

At that moment Kui had entered the house, but the players inside were still four in number.

Because Fish was missing.

“The moment Kui said there were snake descendants on the roof, she had already climbed out the window!”

Boom!

A tremendous crash came from the roof, then the part of the roof behind them collapsed.

Fish fell from the roof clutching a snake descendant by the throat!